


stories

by livetoclaim



Category: Maleficent (2014)
Genre: Angst, F/F, slightly meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-12
Updated: 2015-03-12
Packaged: 2018-03-17 14:08:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3532136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livetoclaim/pseuds/livetoclaim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I heard a story, while I was out there", Aurora says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	stories

”I heard a story, while I was out there”, Aurora says when she returns.

It is not the first thing she says, of course. First, Maleficent pulls Aurora close in a long, aching embrace and never wants to let go. She breathes in the scent of Aurora's hair and cannot quite believe that Aurora is fine, that she is back, that she has returned unhurt. Aurora leans her head against Maleficent's chest and holds her back and says nothing, and Maleficent closes her eyes and savors Aurora's living warmth and knows this moment will not last near as long as she would like it to. 

”How long?” Aurora asks quietly. That is the first thing she says, and she lifts her head from Maleficent's chest and backs away from Maleficent's closeness - a fraction of an inch only, and yet even this small distance between them is enough to cause Maleficent almost psychical pain. 

”Not long”, Maleficent says, and swallows. She feels the barely audible quiver to her voice, and knows Aurora can hear it, too. ”A day and a night, barely.” 

_Not long._ Of course not, but Maleficent has felt every single moment of that day and that night, and the fear has held her heart in too tight an iron grip to let go immediately. She lets out a deep breath, trying to tell herself that it is fine, that Aurora is back. She is back, and she is unhurt and unchanged – at least seemingly, and at least mostly. ”For you?” Maleficent asks, her heart pounding with dread. She almost does not want to know. 

Aurora lets out a deep breath, too. From the way she closes her eyes and from the way she turns her head Maleficent knows that she does not really wish to speak of it quite yet. ”Almost six months”, she says.

_Almost six months._ The words are a heavy blow, but one that is not entirely unexpected. Maleficent swallows in an attempt to accept it. _Six months._ It could be worse, she tries telling herself – it could still be much, much worse. 

_And how long_ , she wants to ask, _had passed since your last visit? A decade? Two?_ She almost does not want to know, but Aurora opens her eyes and looks at Maleficent with eyes that seem to see something else entirely, and answers Maleficent's question before she has even voiced it: 

”Almost a century.” 

 

_Almost six months._ Maleficent hears those words in her head, over and over again, as she sits in the shadows under the tree by the river. _Almost six months._ In the river, Aurora has washed her hair and her body and now, she is just sitting there in the shallow waters, eyes closed and breathing. She says nothing - she does not even glance is Maleficent's direction, nor does she give any other outward sign of being conscious of Maleficent's presence. And yet she has told Maleficent, when they have spoken of this before, that yes, she does like for Maleficent to sit there by the tree, she does like to know that Maleficent is near. Even when she has just returned, even when she has just lived six months in another world and cannot quite speak of it yet, even when all she needs is time to breathe and to wash the human world away in the river. 

So that is what Maleficent will do. No matter how much it hurts to keep this distance, she will give Aurora the time to herself that she needs. She will sit here by the tree - close enough that Aurora will be able to seek her out effortlessly once she does want to talk, or to merely come sit next to Maleficent on the grass and lean her head on Maleficent's shoulder and say nothing – and yet far enough to satisfy Aurora's craving for solitude. She will sit here with her heart pounding and wait, and watch Aurora in the river, and try to reassure herself that nothing terrible has happened to her. 

And she will try, without success, to not attempt to find signs of the passing of those six months on Aurora's face. She will try to not wonder if those thin lines by her eye were there already when Aurora left, if there is not some new weariness to the way she moves her hands, some new lightness to some particular strands in her hair. Aurora is not _old_ , not yet, Maleficent thinks and swallows at the dryness in her throat, as Aurora leans her head backwards and her long, fair hair floats out behind her in the water. She is still _young_ , and not even a human will age _that_ terribly in only six months. But they _accumulate_ , those months: six this time, and four the time before that - only one the time before _that_ , but almost a whole long _year_ the terrible time before _that._ The months accumulate and become years, and the years will draw lines in Aurora's face, and gray her hair, and break down her body, and age her beyond any help or repair, and that is even if she survives everything else, all the violence and cruelty and irreversible _changing_ of the human world--- 

Because there is that other answer, too, to the question Maleficent did not even ask, and in a certain way, it eats at her insides more than the six months do: _Almost a century._

Almost a century has passed in the human kingdoms in the short summer months Aurora remained with Maleficent in the Moors. _Almost a century_ \- and Aurora has told her before, that it is becoming more and more difficult, every time she does this, to find the places and times where the realms still align and passage becomes possible. That the human world and the Moors are falling further and further out of sync with each other, that time is slowing to a halt in the Moors while spinning faster and faster on their outside. That the time when everyone could cross the border as if it was a line on a map – for all that it was only a few short decades past in Aurora's life and in Maleficent's life - is centuries ago for the humans, and has become something people out there do not even quite believe was ever possible. 

And that is perhaps the worst of it – the _speed_ with which this happens, the uncontrollable spinning away, the chasm of time yawning ever wider and more dangerous for every fleeting moment. This time, Aurora remained in the Moors for two months and a century passed - she was gone for a day and a night and lived six months in the human Kingdoms. Next time, she may very well be gone an hour and return fifty years later. She may return grey-haired and wrinkled and dying of old age. She may be lost for decades and decades without finding a way back. She may never find her way back - she may be lost for centuries without finding the passage, there may be no passage to find anymore; she may die alone in some filthy room in a human inn without ever seeing the Moors again. For Aurora to return only to die of old age in Maleficent's arms is too horrible to contemplate – for Aurora to never return at all is near enough unthinkable. 

_And I could not even come looking for you. I could do nothing._ For Maleficent is the Protector of the Moors, and she is bound here, into the slowing of time, into the falling away from the human world. 

And if only Aurora was to remain in the Moors and never leave, she would be safe, and she would not age at all - or would, at least, age as slowly as Maleficent herself will, so slowly as to make no matter. If she only was to remain, they would never grow old and they would never die. Aurora would be safe, always, and Maleficent would be able to keep her safe. Maleficent knows this, and Aurora knows this, too – yet, Aurora has always insisted on leaving anyway, and perhaps that is why Maleficent is not as relieved as she should be that Aurora is back. She watches Aurora stretch her body out in waters of the river and look up into the skies, and her mouth is dry and her heart still pounds with fear even though Aurora is back, even though she is unharmed and aged only a fraction. 

Because next time, it may not be so. Because Aurora knows that, too. Because she has known that every time she has left the Moors, and yet she has always insisted on leaving, anyway. 

 

As the midday passes into afternoon, Aurora comes up from the river. She sits down next to Maleficent and puts her head on her shoulder, and asks of news of the Moors. And Maleficent wraps her wings around them both, and answers her questions – as if there really were any news to speak of, as if Aurora really had been gone the six months she has lived, and not the short day and night the Moors themselves have known in the meantime.

And as the afternoon passes into evening and night, they walk. They walk along streams and brooks and up hills and through forests and glades, and Aurora greets all the fairies and pixies and wallerbogs and water sprites and tree guardians, who all express just as much delight over seeing her again as she does to see them. Aurora smiles, and exchanges pleasantries and jokes and laughs, and slowly, slowly something of the tension in her loosens. 

And as they walk, Aurora holds Maleficent's hand, and tells her a few small stories of her own. Of some new type of food she sampled, of the name of a faraway city she heard of but never will see, of some new style of clothing worn just so, of some traveler she met along the road. Maleficent knows it will be weeks or months before all of Aurora's small observations of everything she has experienced in the human Kingdoms has formed into any sort of a coherent whole, and she will try to tell Maleficent the story of where she went and what she did, with a clear beginning and a clear end. At that point, weeks or months from now, Aurora will make an attempt to explain to Maleficent in exactly which ways everything was different, what the broad strikes of change have been for the humans: Kingdoms rising and falling, new roads drawn into new directions, mechanical inventions changing the way seeds are sown and harvested in the fields – and Maleficent will listen and try to understand, but she will not, not truly, as she has not truly understood any of Aurora's accounts of the human world for very long. 

And even these small stories Aurora tells her now - even these perfectly innocent interludes where Aurora escaped unhurt and met someone who was kind to her - frighten Maleficent beyond reason, because she cannot quite wrap her mind around all that _change_ , around all those thousands and thousands of details which are different every time Aurora leaves the Moors.

_Surely, this is enough?_ Maleficent wants to say as they walk through the Moors and Aurora tells her innocent, happy stories with a profound sadness lurking behind her eyes. _Surely, the human world has become too strange even for you, too dangerous? Surely, you realize by now that there is no guarantee anymore that you will be able to pass yourself off as merely some traveler from some far away place? Surely you realize that there is no guarantee that you will ever find a passage back if you leave again?_

But she says nothing, because perhaps Aurora does realize this. Perhaps that particular sadness behind her eyes comes from knowing that she will have to stop her forays before it is too late. Perhaps that particular loosening of tension in her when she speaks to the denizens of the Moors comes from her feeling that this is her home, the one place her heart truly belongs. Perhaps the way she holds on to Maleficent's hand as if she would never let go is because she will not, because she will stay and be safe, forever. 

 

It is only when the day has faded into evening and night that Aurora and Maleficent are sitting together under an old oak tree. The air is soft and dark and warm, alive with the sounds of the night time creatures of the Moors, and Maleficent leans against the tree. Aurora is resting her head on Maleficent's shoulder, and Maleficent has her arm around Aurora shoulders. In her lap, Aurora is holding Maleficent's hand in her own, running fingertips over Maleficent's palm, but Maleficent can tell that her thoughts are somewhere far away. For a while, though, neither of them speaks, and then Aurora says it:

”I heard a story, while I was out there”, she says. Her voice is a strangely pained, and she turns her head to looks up at Maleficent with eyes begging for understanding. 

”Mm.” Maleficent feels no surprise at all. Perhaps over the years they have grown close enough to almost read each other's thoughts, because she understands at once that Aurora is referring to a very particular kind of story. ”About a Princess, and an Evil Faerie, and a Curse.”

Aurora nods and sighs deeply. ”Yes”, she says. ”And a Wall of Thorns, and True Love's Kiss.” Her lips quirk but the smile does not quite reach her eyes.

”Mm”, Maleficent says, and despite everything, she almost smiles, because even after all these years, there is still such _power_ in those words. _True Love's Kiss._ In the words, and in the memory of what is _was_ , what it _meant._

Aurora, too, feels that power. Her smile deepens at the corners and becomes heartfelt, and she holds Maleficent's eye for a few long moments, before she sighs and turns away to look out over the darkening hills before them. 

”It starts with a christening, this story”, Aurora says, just as Maleficent is starting to doubt that she will continue at all. ”A king has a child, and at the christening, three good faeries turn up to bestow gifts upon the child.” She looks up on Maleficent again. ”There is nothing, before that”, she says. ”It starts there. There is nothing about the king, nothing about what manner of man he is, nothing. Just that. There is a christening, a celebration, and three good faeries are there to give the child gifts.” Aurora sighs. ”And then, in comes an other faerie, an _evil_ faerie, who arrives uninvited and who is, perhaps, feeling scorned at not having been invited or somesuch nonsense. Certainly with no motivation behind _that._ ” 

Aurora looks pained, and Maleficent lifts her hand to touch her cheek gently in some vain attempt to soothe that look of her face, even as her stomach churns suddenly. She wishes Aurora would not look so distraught – what is it to Maleficent, after all, if the humans remember her only as some evil doer without motivations or reasons? A reason is no _justification_ after all – no matter what Stefan did to her, that does not mean that she was in any way _justified_ in putting a curse on his innocent, newborn daughter. 

Aurora closes her eyes and leans into the touch. ”And she puts a curse on the princess”, she says, ”That on her sixteenth birthday, she shall prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and die.” 

Maleficent nods, trying to will away the lump in her throat, and her heart starts to hammer with the guilt she will never entirely put behind her. In truth, Aurora slept her cursed sleep only for a day, but Maleficent's curse was cast to last forever – if not _death_ exactly, then close enough to make no matter. So far, the story is, after all, true enough to events, certainly not filled with such misconceptions as to explain Aurora's obvious discomfort with it – not that Maleficent much enjoys to be reminded of events as they were, either, but that is pain she well deserves. ”And then?” she asks when the silence has stretched on for several moments and it is becoming obvious that Aurora will not continue unprompted. 

”And then...” Aurora opens her eyes again, and pulls her hand out of Maleficent's grip to rub at her face. ”One of those good faeries manages to change the curse, so that the princess will not die, exactly, but only fall into a death-like sleep, from which she will be able to wake by the power of True Love's Kiss. And the princess grows up, and on her sixteenth birthday, she pricks her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel, and falls into a death-like sleep. She falls into a death-like sleep, and she sleeps. And she sleeps... for a hundred years. She sleeps for a hundred years, and the evil faerie makes a Wall of Thorns grow up around the castle, so that no one will ever find it. ”

Maleficent's throat tightens. Aurora's eyes are still full of some unnamed pain as she turns to look at Maleficent again. 

”They call this the story of the Sleeping Beauty”, she says. ”That is all the princess does. She is cursed, and she sleeps. For a hundred years. And in the end, there comes some handsome prince, who has somehow heard of the princess, and hacks his way through that Wall of Thorns, and finds her, and kisses her, and of course that's True Love's Kiss, and she wakes up, and they marry, and he gets half the kingdom and all.” Aurora swallows. ”That's all there is to it, now. The princess sleeps for a hundred years, and the king is a good man, and the faerie does evil without cause or reason, and in the end, the True Love is a handsome prince who has never seen the princess before that day.” 

Maleficent opens her mouth to speak, but she cannot find words. Her impulse, of course, is to tell Aurora that this story she heard is not the _truth_ , that they both know it is not, even if the people of the human kingdoms do not. But that is not the point, and they both know that, too. 

”I mean, I know I did not do all I could have done, I know I--” Aurora sighs again, and rubs at her face, and Maleficent caresses her hand gently.

”You did everything you could”, she says, because this she can say, because this is true and Aurora knows it, too. ”You did more than anyone could ever have expected from you. You united us, when no one else could have. You gave us all years and years of peace, and healing, and...” 

”You and me both”, Aurora says, and presses Maleficent's hand. ”We did it together. For as long as it lasted.” 

”Yes.” _For as long as it lasted._

”And I _tried!_ At least I _tried!_ I didn't just _sleep,_ I wasn't just some... price to be claimed, I wasn't just waiting for some _Prince_ to come rescue me!” There is old pain in Aurora's voice, old pain that Maleficent knows all too well. 

”I know”, she says softly. ”I know.”

”All those times I refused to marry, all those times I fought my lords and what they would have had me do and _won_ , and now... All that I am remembered as is the Sleeping Beauty. Who slept, and did nothing, and was rescued by a prince.”

Aurora's voice is fraught with bitterness, and Maleficent understands, she does. ”They could not turn you into what they wanted you to be when you were their Queen”, she says, ”but now that you are gone, that is what the stories have turned you into, all the same.”

” _Yes._ And it's not _fair._ It's not fair to me, or to you, or my father... Or even to poor Phillip”, she adds, almost reluctantly, ”if that is who the Prince is supposed to be.”

_He means well_ , Aurora would always say, but Maleficent was not ever entirely convinced. Of Phillip's good intentions, perhaps, but not of his ability to understand what marrying him would have meant to Aurora - what a defeat it would have been, if she had, after all, gone through with it. Maleficent sighs and tries to let it go – it was a long time ago, and that is not what this is about, after all.

”You know, I almost prefer that horrible story put out by Count Lucas to this”, Aurora says. ”At least that one acknowledged that you meant something to me. At least it acknowledged... us.”

Maleficent shivers, because she certainly does _not_ prefer that story. It frightened her to the bone, the first time she heard it – Count Lucas, in the Council Hall, his arm flung out in Maleficent's direction but his face and his voice turned to his fellow Lords: _Is it not_ obvious _to everyone that there is a second curse at play here? That this spell Queen Aurora was under was in no way broken just because she woke from her enchanted sleep? That this faerie still has our Queen under a spell, nay, a_ curse _? How else do we explain her... fixation... on this creature?_

Maleficent still feels a cold tendril of fear at the memory. Fear that Aurora would, even for a second, even consider the possibility that just maybe, maybe, it might be true.

She swallows to help her dry throat. ”That story did not acknowledge your capability to make your own decisions, either”, she says quietly. 

Aurora sighs and leans her head on Maleficent's shoulder again. ”No”, she agrees. ”It certainly did not.” 

And that story came back to haunt them, too. They heard it, years later, told just like that: A story of a Queen living under the dark curse of an evil faerie, a curse which might – just might – be broken if only she was to marry the right man. A man who could take matters into his hands and steer the Kingdom in the right direction, away from the surely dangerous course that was being charted by the cursed Queen and her evil faerie consort. 

And men believed it. Maleficent knows all too well the power of stories, true or not. She can almost see the connections, the lines running from Count Lucas' words in the Council Hall that day, to the story of the Sleeping Beauty Aurora heard two hundred years later. 

”I wanted so much to tell them”, Aurora says, recalling Maleficent to the present, ”when I heard that story. I wanted to tell them how it _was_ , how it really _was._ ” She swallows, the lump in her throat obvious in her voice. ”But I didn't dare. If I had – if I had claimed to be the Princess of their story, I would have been locked away in one of their asylums for certain.”

Maleficent pulls Aurora closer. Her heart pounds violently – there is a part of her that wants nothing as much as to tell Aurora that it does not matter, that it is only a story, twisted by decades and centuries. That the only thing that matters is that Aurora – and Maleficent, and all the denizens of the Moors – know the truth. 

But Maleficent knows the power of stories. She knows that they always mean something – that they, even when they make no claim to depicting true events, still say something about what the world is like, or what it should be like. 

She swallows again. ”You could always tell them... just that you have heard the story differently. That it is told differently, where you come from.”

Aurora sighs. ”I've thought of that, too”, she admits. ”I could do that, I suppose. But then... Then it would just be an other story, just... a small curiosity. Why would anyone even _care_ that it is told differently, somewhere?” 

Maleficent wants to tell Aurora that she is right, that it does not matter, that it is not worth the danger Aurora will put herself in if she returns again to the human Kingdoms. She wants to tell Aurora to stay in the Moors, to be safe, to not risk again the violence and chaos of the human world. She wants to tell her to be safe, always – to never grow old, and never die, and to stay with Maleficent for ever. 

She wants to. But she will not. Because Aurora knows as well as Maleficent does what she risks every time she leaves the Moors, and even if Maleficent does not fully understand _why_ returning to the human Kingdoms time and time again – even when centuries and centuries have passed and the human lands have changed beyond recognition and changed again – means so much to Aurora, she knows that she has no right to tell Aurora it should not.

Maleficent draws a deep breath and lets it out again. ”I am certain”, she says slowly, ”that there will always be people who are looking for other stories, and other truths. That there are people who would very much like to hear that the princess did not merely sleep a hundred years.”

Aurora turns her head to look at Maleficent – there is still sadness in her eyes, yes, but there is something else too: a _fierceness_ , a light, a hope. 

"And", she says, ”that her True Love's Kiss was not from some prince who had never even seen her before that day.”

Aurora's eyes are full of faith, and love, and trust, and Maleficent nods slowly, and swallows. She wants so terribly to make Aurora stay, she wants to hold her forever and protect her and never let her leave, never let her grow old and die. She _wants_ to, and perhaps she even _could_ , perhaps she has that kind of power, but if she _did_ , if her wishes about what Aurora was to do or want did override what Aurora actually _does_ want, well, then she would be the evil faerie of Aurora's Sleeping Beauty-tale. Then she would be the faerie who cursed the princess into sleeping for all eternity - safe, perhaps, but robbed of any ability to decide for herself - and built a Wall of Thorns around the castle so that no one could ever find her. She would be the Prince, who thought that just because he fought his way through, that meant that he could lay claim to the princess and the kingdom alike, no matter what the princess wished or not. She would be, even, the faerie of Count Lucas' tale, whose curse never ended, who made Aurora love her not because she wished, but because she had no choice. 

And Maleficent is not those things. She absolutely and utterly _refuses_ to be. 

And so, Maleficent swallows, and touches Aurora's cheek softly.

”So you will tell them”, she says, ”next time.”

And Aurora smiles at her and kisses her hand. ”Yes”, she says, gently – because she knows what this is costing Maleficent, and she knows the risk she will take. ”Next time, I will.”

**Author's Note:**

> I... I can't quite believe that I actually managed to _finish_ a fic. It's been way. way, waaaay too long.


End file.
